Why accepting any degree is damaging graduate recruitment

February 06, 2017

The decision by employers to open up a lot of their graduate roles to allow any individuals with a 'good' degree ranking to be considered for their roles, regardless of what the degree subject is, was intended to help widen the talent pool available. However while it may have achieved this in some regards, this decision has arguably also had a detrimental impact on graduate recruitment as well. Now rather than having clear guidelines to work with when it comes to hiring decisions, this open policy means there is even more confusion about what the 'right' candidate looks like. Without the boundary of a specific degree subject, recruiters are now having to find other ways to assess the suitability of individuals, yet still only having the degree information and basic CV to work from.

This is certainly not to say that inviting graduates from all subject areas to apply for roles is a bad thing; in fact it does widen the candidate pool, and offers a much higher chance of employers finding a suitable person for their company. However this opportunity is severely limited by the approach taken; employers continue to use relatively arbitrary information to assess applicants, sifting through thousands of similar resumes that don't really offer any information about the actual person or their skills, and taking a pot luck approach to recruitment.

The ideal scenario is to develop a much deeper profile of candidates based on the specific needs, values and strategy of the company, and the skills required to do the job. Some organisations already have such measures built into their hiring process, and if candidates don't immediately match up with this they are disregarded, saving valuable time for the applicant and the company, and this is exactly what Happy Work wants to provide to all companies. A resource that allows you to be highly specific in what you desire in a candidates and only be matched with people who fit that criteria, ensuring that regardless of their degree, the right people can be identified, quickly and easily.